Chapter 80 - To See You Again — It's So Good
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One hour earlier.
The Lion's Gate defense line had finally fallen quiet.
The Khornate horde was broken. Those frenzied Warp-things, ground down between two Primarchs working as one, left their wreckage strewn across the rampart and slunk back through that foul Webway tear with their tails between their legs.
Humanity's ancient cradle had weathered annihilation one more time.
And the visceral, no-holds-barred slaughter had purged something out of Horus, ten thousand years of buried guilt and gloom, vented in a single afternoon of honest killing.
The Wolf Shepherd practically glowed now. His weathered face was lit with pure battle-joy and pride.
Guilliman walked beside him, watching that broad, straight back. The Lord of Ultramar found himself thinking that the commander who had stood radiant and unshakable at the Ullanor Triumph, the perfect elder brother revered by every gene-son, had truly come back. Not a ghost. Not a memory. The real thing.
The two of them followed their Custodian escort down the towering arcade toward the inner Palace.
Old Kullen trailed half a pace behind, never letting the gap widen. Horus knew the Dark Angels veteran hadn't set foot on Terra in centuries, no one he'd once known was still alive on this world. So the Wolf Shepherd meant to keep him close until they found the Lion.
The three walked through the gilded corridors in a mood that was, surprisingly, almost light.
Guilliman even unbent enough to talk shop, breaking down the small tactical adjustments from the rampart with Horus. Now and then real laughter cracked between them.
Then they rounded a massive sculpted corner,
and nearly walked straight into someone coming the other way.
Kaelen was staring at the floor, his head full of curses for the absurd new commission the bald old man had just dumped on him.
He wasn't watching where he was going.
"Kaelen?"
The Wolf Shepherd looked down at his mortal friend, and his brow knit at once.
Something on Kaelen jumped out at him. Hard.
The plain Imperial captain's uniform was streaked from chest to cuff in great, thick patches of dark red. Not daemon ichor, daemon blood reeked of sulphur. This was pure rust and iron. Human blood. Or transhuman.
Horus crossed the gap in one long stride. His broad hand came down on Kaelen's shoulder.
"What happened? My friend — are you hurt?"
The Wolf Shepherd's voice had gone tight in an instant.
The noise dragged Kaelen back into the moment. He glanced down at the dried smears on his coat, what he'd picked up hauling Sanguinius and Loken up off the floor, and brushed a casual hand down his lapel.
"Not hurt. Just got a little blood on me." He looked up and took in the three looming figures in front of him. "So how'd the fight go, my Wolf God?"
Horus checked him over once more, confirmed there really wasn't a wound under all that mess, and let out his breath.
He turned slightly, gesturing to Kullen and Guilliman at his side. There was a smile in his eyes.
"See for yourself, my friend."
His voice was deep and clear.
"We are whole. We have come back in triumph."
Kaelen folded his arms across his chest and drew the words out, slow and theatrical.
"Ohhh~ back in triumph."
He looked up at this thoroughly-rebooted Samoyed, Wolf Shepherd, he corrected himself, and felt that familiar little devil rise up in his chest. He just had to see what kind of face this gene-Primarch was about to pull.
"So what do two triumphant generals want?" Kaelen arched an eyebrow. "An over-the-top victory feast? Or, you know, a big surprise?"
Horus held his gaze.
A Primarch's instincts were sharp. Horus knew, instantly, that his mortal friend was sitting on something outrageous.
He laughed under his breath.
"A victory feast does matter." Horus rolled his neck. "I want one I won't forget, with you, with Roboute, with Kullen. All of us at the same table."
Then he paused.
The easy posture dropped away. He looked at Kaelen with something much quieter and much more serious.
"For me, today is a beginning. The past cut away. The future opened."
Beside him, Guilliman nodded. The Lord of Ultramar felt every word of that land.
Then Horus tilted his head, and curiosity crept into his tone.
"But your surprise — I want that more. Some mysterious gift?"
Kaelen didn't answer right away.
He let his eyes drift back and forth between Guilliman and Horus, drawing it out, stretching them tight.
"Not a gift." He shook his head slowly.
"But it does concern you two." He added.
Guilliman and Horus traded a glance. Both brothers found the teasing genuinely unbearable, and both knew, just as clearly, that they had no leverage at all over this particular mortal.
Guilliman rubbed his chin, that famous political mind already turning.
"If it concerns us, then let me guess..." He frowned thoughtfully. "Has the Emperor handed down some new directive aimed at us?"
"No." Kaelen shot it down at once.
Wrong guess.
Horus took up the line. He knew Kaelen's habit of pulling supplies, and impossibilities, out of nowhere.
"Then you've conjured something Roboute and I have been longing for?" Horus grinned, half-joking.
Kaelen widened his eyes in mock astonishment.
"Wolf God, you're a genius. How'd you guess I brought Sanguinius and Loken over?"
Horus kept right on smiling that easy, indulgent smile.
"Haha, I knew it,"
He'd already started agreeing.
And then.
His voice locked in his throat.
The smile froze on his face.
"Wait,!"
That enormous frame rocked, hard, like something had struck it. Beside him, Guilliman and Kullen both sucked in a sharp breath at the same instant.
The Wolf Shepherd recovered in under a second. He stepped forward and seized Kaelen's wrist.
"Kaelen! My friend! You're sure? You're not lying to me?! This isn't a joke?!"
His voice came out half-cracked with disbelief, his massive chest heaving like an overworked bellows.
Even Guilliman couldn't hold the seasoned-politician mask. The Lord of Ultramar, reason incarnate, had gone red around the eyes, and there was an unmistakable wet shine welling at the edges.
"Sanguinius... Sanguinius..."
Guilliman murmured the name again and again, his body leaning forward on its own.
That was their most perfect brother. The deepest unhealed wound any of them carried.
"Why would I lie? They both came back with serious injuries, so I dosed them with the serums, they're doing a lot better. They're lying down in the medical bay right n, "
Kaelen didn't get to finish. His feet left the floor.
"Then we go. Now."
Horus scooped him up in a single motion, ignored every single protest, and tucked him firmly under one arm.
Then the massive Wolf Shepherd hit his power boots and ran, back the way Kaelen had come, accelerating past any reasonable limit.
Guilliman didn't say a word. He just broke into a sprint after them.
Kullen drew his power sword and threw himself after the two Primarchs for all he was worth.
"Holy shit, slow down, you bastard, slow down, AAAH,!"
Pinned under Horus's arm, Kaelen couldn't even keep his eyes open against the headwind. The flesh on his cheeks rippled from the pressure.
In the solemn, hallowed corridors of the inner Palace, an utterly ridiculous race broke out.
The Custodians at their posts along the route, the Administratum officials walking with data-slates in hand, all of them registered only several oppressive, blurring silhouettes ripping past in a small hurricane.
A few servo-skulls were flipped straight into the walls by the slipstream.
Nobody dared step out to intervene.
The two leading the charge were living gene-Primarchs.
Inside of 3 minutes, a route that would have taken half an hour was simply gone.
Horus skidded to a stop at the end of a corridor, his power boots tearing twin lines of sparks across the stone.
He set Kaelen down. His chest was heaving.
The heavy metal door of the medical bay stood right in front of them.
Four golden-armored Custodians held watch at the entrance. They saw the two Primarchs come barreling up like that and their hands tightened on their halberds, but they didn't move to block.
Horus raised his hand toward the door panel.
And that hand, the hand that crushed Terminator armor like tin, the hand that had just struck the head from a Greater Daemon of Khorne, stopped in midair. Trembling. He couldn't stop it.
He was afraid that when the door opened, he'd find it had only ever been a dream.
He was more afraid of facing the brother he himself had killed.
A steadier hand settled over his.
Guilliman reached past Horus's shoulder, his azure eyes fixed straight ahead. His throat worked, once, hard.
The Lord of Ultramar pressed the green key for his brother.
With a low hiss of releasing pressure, the heavy isolation doors slid apart.
The smell of antiseptic and heavy incense rolled out to meet them.
Inside the wide medical bay, banks of high-end life-support instruments blinked softly in the dim.
Two specially fitted suspension beds sat at the center of the room.
From one of them came a sound, small, very small, and enough to tear Horus's soul open.
The angel with the crown of brilliant gold hair and the vast pure-white wings was sitting up against the headrest.
He'd heard the door.
Sanguinius turned his head, slowly, and his gaze passed over the Custodians at the threshold to settle, perfectly, on the two figures at the front, the bald giant of Cthonia, and the gold-haired, blue-eyed son of Macragge.
He smiled.
"Horus. Roboute. My brothers. It's good — so good — to see you again."
(There may be another chapter tonight. The author has finally figured out why his brainpower's been running low these past few days, high-protein low-carb, no rice, no noodles. So after demolishing some big steamed buns tonight, he'll see if inspiration shows up.)
➤ Next: Now, the Third Empire Truly Rises
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